“Your anger makes you strong, Katrina. But you must learn to control it. Now tell me, before I have reason to dislocate your shoulder, why are you so angry?”
I cry, trying to look up to see her, but I can't, no matter how hard I kick or fight. Finally, I howl, letting the truth out. “My parents! They got blowed up!”
Virginia eases off her arm lock slightly but keeps a strong grip on my wrist. “Tell me what happened.”
I close my eyes and struggle against the memories, but they come flooding out anyway, carrying me away. “Mama and Papa, we were at the Fair Grounds. We'd gone for the horse show... I'd begged them to take me after that movie, and after the hurricane. Mama said that she'd dropped her phone, and I told her I'd go get it. I run back and see it on the ground near the door to the elevator, and turn around. The car... the car blowed up! The fire... it's so hot... MAMA! PAPA! DON'T LEAVE ME!”
I'm sobbing, and Virginia releases my arm to pull me up into an embrace. She lets me sob and scream my horror, anger, and everything into her chest. When the tears finally stop, Virginia lifts me to my knees and looks into my eyes. “This is very, very important, Katrina. What do you want to do with this rage?”
I sniff and wipe at my nose, looking into Virginia's sand-colored eyes. “I want to kill whoever killed Mama and Papa.”
I know I shouldn't say it. The social workers tell me that it's wrong to feel this way, that I'm supposed to live and let live like Pastor Gibb who comes by the orphanage says we should do...but I'm no Jesus. I want something darker.
But Virginia doesn't flinch, and instead she nods, brushing a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Good. You're being honest, which is a good thing. Then I make you a promise. Your training will not be easy. You may not survive your vengeance. But I swear to you, as someone who's been there... you will not fail.”
I open my eyes to see the candle's burned itself out. I smile, feeling refreshed. Using meditation to supplement sleep wasn't something that Virginia taught me, but I can't deny that I learned a lot from her. She was the first in a long line of instructors, of teachers who gave me the skills that have finally brought me to this point.
I shift positions, rolling onto my back because I know my feet are going to be asleep still after kneeling for what's most likely been an hour or more. As blood flow slowly returns to my toes, I feel a pain that gradually subsides into the familiar pins and needles sensation that's always a part of this process. My feet are still tingling when I hear the door to my loft unlock. I sit up immediately—only a few people have a key to my place, but still I'm wary. It pays to be careful, and pays more to be paranoid.
The door opens, and the soft lighting above my door shows me it's Darcy. She's another one of my mentors, but more importantly, she's my best friend. She's thirty-two years old, but Virginia introduced us six years ago, on my sixteenth birthday. Meeting Darcy was my birthday gift from Virginia, and in the long run has been the best gift I've ever gotten. “Darce, I'm over here.”
“Damn girl, I know you want to cut down on your electricity bill, but you could run this entire setup right now with two nine-volts and a hamster wheel,” Darcy says, making her way through the dim space. “What, short on money again?”
“You know that's not the problem,” I tell her, although there have been times in the past when I barely had two dimes to rub together and another payday nowhere in sight. “The skills you taught me provide better than that.”
An anarchic, idealistic hacktivist, it took Darcy a long time to come around to my point of view on things, and agreeing to teach me more than the basics of computer science. Not that my education was ever traditional, but nowadays, under the hacker handle Coup De Grace, I'm able to earn enough to put food in my stomach and keep the lights on.
“Yeah, of course I know,” Darcy says, her boots clomping on the floor. She and I share somewhat similar viewpoints on fashion, and that's one of the things we bonded over first. Well, that and a hatred of all things Microsloth. “Jeff saw the pics a half hour ago. I dropped Henry off with his grandmother and hightailed it over here, telling her a client had a computer issue. She doesn't quite understand my work, so it's cool like that.”
“You didn't need to rush over here. I'm fine,” I say, getting to my feet. My little toes are still tingling, but it's not too bad. “Have you seen them?”
“Sho'nuff. Didn't think he'd be so... short. Thick, but short.” She holds the tips of her index fingers close together, indicating his length.
I laugh and get up. I know she’s talking shit because she knows my hatred of the family. He damn sure wasn’t short. “Actually, he's bigger than the average man. I'd say a solid eight or nine, although I didn't have my ruler with me. I'm guessing the jacket hid some, and the angle of the photo hid some more. They get any of me?”
“They got your body and hair, but the photos released so far don't show your face. Don't matter, though, since you're off-grid so much. But from what I did see...you were lookin' good, girl.”
Darcy's comment about me being off-grid is true. Katrina Grammercy has no driver's license, no photo IDs, no voter registration card, not even a library card. Everything is handled through 'Net identities and anonymous numbered accounts, or face to face with no paper trail. Cuts down on my income... but money isn't what I need. And it's definitely not what motivates me.
“Well, regardless, you and I both know that Peter DeLaCoeur's going to be coming for me. I just need enough time to take him the rest of the way down,” I say.
“And your friend? I know he's a womanizing asshole, Kat, but he was your best friend when you were kids. You take Papa DLC down, you take down Jacky-boy, too.”
I sigh and shake my head. It surprised me, but it actually hurt when I saw the look in Jackson's eyes. Once he realized who I was, there was a distinct look of betrayal I saw before I got out of the car. “You know there's no other way, Darce. I can't attack the DeLaCoeurs head on. Hell, I can't even hack their systems. Peter runs his business the old-fashioned way, with a lot of offline backups, and he only keeps paper trails on the stuff that's legit. From what I can tell, his memory's the only thing that keeps track of his illegal dealings. I need to pull the king out of his fortress, or else I'm dead before I get anywhere near him.”
“You could be dead either way,” Darcy reminds me. “And that, to me at least, is a greater loss than not getting your revenge.”
This is one of the few areas where we still disagree, but we're at peace with the situation. By that I mean I'm at peace with Darcy continually trying to get me to have a more positive outlook on life, and she's at peace with wasting her time trying to achieve that. “Not revenge, Darce. Vengeance. There's a difference,” I say.
“So you've told me for the past six years. But you know I disagree.”
We walk toward my sitting area, if you can call it that. My sitting area is mostly two old, patched-up wooden chairs from the boxing gym. The accompanying “table” is nothing more than a board of plywood sitting on top of two old computer towers. Since Darcy's here, I turn on the light, which is a solar-powered LED lantern that recharges during the day from the small amount of sunlight that comes in through the only window that isn't boarded up in the warehouse. “Darcy, if you really disagreed with me that much, you'd tell Jeff. If he busted a hacker like me, he'd get a promotion for sure. At the very least, it'd get him off patrols and a detective's shield.”